Being happy when life is crappy

Recently I've noticed that I've fallen into a bad old habit. It's thinking that I can only be happy if everything in my life goes well. I've worked hard to develop new thinking habits over the past 30 years but the old ones still occasionally poke their heads through, like weeds in a flower garden. My best weedkiller for this pesky idea is summed up by the slogan 'I can be happy even when life is crappy.' This reminds me that life doesn't have to be perfect for me to enjoy it.

In fact it goes even further, and reminds me that life is never perfect. If I look hard enough I'll always find something that I could be upset about. I could always lose a little weight, have a little bit more money or energy, have better relationships or more vocational success. The trick with being happy when things are crappy is to notice the positives that do happen, and plan activities that are engrossing and meaningful, as well as fun. Having goals also helps. More than anything it's about where I direct my focus - onto what's wrong, or what I'm enjoying, planning and achieving.

CBT - Chocolate Behavioural Therapy

Yesterday was a tough day. The threatened mortgagee sale, with the consequent strain on my relationships with family members as we disagree on how to deal with it, and the uncertainty about where I will live, became a threat to my happiness. By early afternoon I was feeling completely miserable. Luckily I had an appointment for a free mammogram that got me out of the house. One of my tried and true techniques for lifting my mood is 'do something - anything' so I knew that simply getting dressed and going out would help. I barely talked to the poor radiologist, worried that one kind word would lead to me losing control and sobbing into the x-ray machine. After the x-ray what I most wanted was a packet of chocolate mint slices - I was sure that would make me feel better!

But before taking such drastic action I headed off the to the park. It was grey and raining (which didn't do anything for my mood!) but the dogs seemed happy to run around while I sat in the car and had a good cry. By the time I joined the dogs the rain had cleared (from both inside and outside the car!) and, with a warm hat and scarf, it was reasonably pleasant. I took a bag to pick up pine cones for the fire, and managed a walk right round the soccer field, quite a long way for me. I knew the bright light and exercise would help my mood, and by the time we got back to the car I felt a lot better.

But not so much better that I had changed my mind about chocolate mint slices! I don't know what it is about chocolate, but it does have a miraculous effect on my mood. (Shame about the disastrous effect on my teeth.) I was moderate in one respect - I bought the budget version! Back home with my spoils I decided to go on with my financial management activities, as I knew achieving something there would make me feel better too. I find behavioural techniques marvelous because they involve so little thinking and inward looking, and actually help me get things ticked on my to do list as well! But to lesssen any feeling of drudgery I watched some funny television programmes while I worked on my laptop.

A bath followed by a UPO (unexpected positive occurence) did the final work on lifting my mood - a friend called and after a heart to heart with her I felt a lot better. When I woke up this morning I heard the sound of the dawn chorus with joy and excitement rather than the sinking feeling I'd had the day before. So I think it's firmly established - chocolate works! Although behavioural techniques can be quite helpful as well.

Is accepting negative emotions enough to stop them?

The other day I posted about how valuable I find simply accepting my negative emotions for reducing them. Not long after I stumbled on the power of acceptance I discovered there's actually a therapy that incorporates this called ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I read up on it and to my surprise found that the founder seemed to be advocating simply accepting negative emotions and not doing anything else. Now, I may have got him wrong, but this is not what works for me. While I love using acceptance because it's so simple and takes much of the stress out of managing my negative emotions, it is by no means the only technique I use. It's my first step in most cases, particularly when I am busy or ill (or just can't be bothered thinking about it!). But I also use other techniques, such as writing down the good things in my life, examining my thoughts for distortions and correcting them, planning my day and doing problem solving. When it comes to transforming depression into happiness I've found there is no 'magic bullet', no one pill to cure all ills. What I've found works best is instead using a range of techniques that make me feel better and have a good fit with my lifestyle, vaues and personality. Together they seem to have a synergy (that dreaded buzz word!) whereby using them all together creates a more powerful impact on depression than using any one alone. I really wouldn't want to rely on acceptance alone, but I'm glad it's one of the tools in my toolbox because it makes life a lot easier.

Dealing with a patch of low motivation

I've learned that part of maintaining stable happiness means dealing positively and constructively with low patches when they occur, as they do even in the happiest life. I had one of these the other day, when I woke up and spent two and half hours staring out the window, feeling unexcited about doing anything. Usually I am Ms Motivation, actively writing to do lists, planning tasks, solving problems, setting goals and bustling along with things. But this day everything just felt too hard, and I couldn't be bothered. Which was a worry, as I had so many things I needed to do.

In the end I turned to my trusty journal, the one I've been keeping for almost 30 years, and simply wrote down what I was feeling. Then I went back and read over the entry, looking for cognitive distortions like permanence (thinking the bad things will last forever), mental filter (focusing on the negatives and overlooking the positives). What was clear to me was that, while there were distortions, a lot of my concerns were realistic. There were a lot of challenges in my life, and sometimes it felt like I was getting nowhere. I realised that I needed to have an eagle eye out for when I had made progress and or something positive happened. I also needed to stop pressuring and criticising myself, and give myself more praise, understanding and encourangement. Just as importantly, I needed to take a break and get away from my normal routine, so it doesn't feel like endless drudge.

Luckily I have a trip away planned for a couple of weeks time, to visit family and friends. Just thinking about how this could give me a change of perspective and a burst of energy helped me feel more motivated. Also acknowledging to myself that things are realistically challenging, and speaking to myself more supportively made a huge difference. I got started on my morning a bit later than usual, but ended up having a much more productive day that felt much less stressful than in previous weeks.

Accepting negative emotions leads to more positive emotions

In my experience of transforming depression into happiness one of the most counter-intuitive techniques I've discovered is simply accepting the bad feelings. Before I discovered this I would put a lot of effort into trying to change my emotions when I felt bad - by doing cognitive work, planning activities, doing something enjoyable, getting bright light or exercising. Or all of the above! It was exhausting and frustrating - sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't.


For many years I worked hard at feeling better. Then one day it occurred to me that maybe if I just accepted my feelings they would ebb and flow and reach a natural level that was more positive. To my surprise, this turned out to be true. When I felt a negative feeling - whether depression, anger, irritation or worry - I simply took a deep breath, thought 'I'm feeling this' and let it go. I found that I felt much more relaxed, less driven and stressed about 'making' myself feel good. I also found that in the next hour or few my emotions became much more positive.

Back again!

After an absence of two years I've decided to start writing this blog again. With depression a world-wide epidemic, it seems important to share what I've learned about transforming depression into happiness. In the past few years life has thrown so many adversities at me, in the form of illness, not being able to work, moving far away from all my friends, having people close to me get sick or die, that maintaining my happiness has been the big focus. I'm delighted and proud that I've been able to do this. I know it's because I've worked so hard at making happiness a habit.

Right now I'm facing the house I live in going into a mortgagee sale and not knowing if the new owner will want me to stay on. It just shows that there is no such thing as security - life is always changing and throwing up new things. This provides yet another challenge to maintaining my precious happiness.

What I'm doing to stay happy in the face of this stress is:

• keeping up my habit of writing down the good things that happen each day (or every few days)


• planning enjoyable events


• looking for things in the situation that I can control, however little. For example, I rang the bank's lawyers to find out the time frame for the sale and typed up and distributed this information to tenants in the other houses the landlord owns


• make sure I have regular rest time where I can do enjoyable activities and not think about practical problems.